By Sebastian Rotella, Washington Post
An officer in Pakistan’s intelligence service chose a Jewish center as a target for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and then helped launch a new plot against Denmark, the star witness in a terrorism trial in Chicago said Tuesday.
In his second day of testimony, David Coleman Headley, a confessed Pakistani American terrorist, revealed more details about close ties between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and Lashkar-i-Taiba, the group accused of carrying out the attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans.
Headley said his ISI handler, a man known only as Major Iqbal, deployed him on the last of five reconnaissance missions to scout targets that included the Chabad House, a Jewish community center where gunmen later killed three American rabbis.
“Major Iqbal told me the Chabad House would be added on whatever list [of targets] there was because it was a front office for the Mossad,” Israel’s intelligence agency, Headley said. He added that Iqbal “seemed upset the [Mumbai] airport was not included” as a target.
Nothing suggests that the claim about the Mossad was true.
Headley described in understated tones how terrorist leaders congratulated him for his work casing luxury hotels and other targets chosen to ensure that Americans and Jews would die. Asked his reaction to the three-day televised slaughter, he responded: “I was pleased.”
Headley, 50, has pleaded guilty to conducting months of crucial reconnaissance in Mumbai and for the Denmark plot. He has since cooperated with federal prosecutors in the trial of his alleged accomplice, Tahawwur Rana. Justice Department officials have also indicted Iqbal, who is a fugitive.
Pakistani officials deny any links to terrorism. They say Headley is not credible because of his past as a drug dealer.
I love it that their dishonesty is so apparent.